Learning from Prior Experience: An Empirical Study of Serial Entrepreneurs in IT-enabled Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding has gained momentum in recent years. Even though an increasing amount of research has been devoted to this domain, the dynamics of this phenomenon has yet to be fully studied. The current study strives to bridge this gap by examining the impacts of prior experiences from serial entrepreneurs’ perspective. Drawing on organizational learning theory, we theorize about the differential effects from several experience dimensions: direct vs. indirect experiences, successful vs. failed experiences, experience richness and diversity of prior experiences. Employing a panel-level analysis approach, we document positive effects of both direct and indirect learning. However, the successful, rich and diverse experience do not always seem to facilitate learning and consequently lead to enhanced performance. Our study applies the organizational learning theory to the crowdfunding context to extend the existing crowdfunding literature in information systems by investigating the dynamics across campaigns. We also provide practical implications for entrepreneurs and platform operators.